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The Vision Beyond the Plan

All President Clinton promised was an economic plan, but his speech to Congress offered something even rarer along the marshy rim of the Potomac -- a vision. If Republicans and Democrats in Congress will only step back from Mr. Clinton's specific proposals, they will discover, perhaps to their horror, that he has assumed the best about them -- namely, that they are capable of conducting business in a brand new way, lifting their sights beyond the short political horizons that normally govern Congressional deliberation.

So what is Mr. Clinton's vision? At its simplest, that it doesn't matter whether you tax and spend by Democratic or Republican rules, as long as you are willing to make politically difficult choices. Ronald Reagan did not much like choosing, so he came up with the idea of cutting taxes, revving up defense spending and assuming that diminished revenues would strangle spending on pesky social programs.

The Democrats in Congress did not like choosing either. So their habit has been to mix the stew of taxes and debt ever richer and thicker, making sure that lots of it got ladled into things like unneeded military bases and consulting fees for Democratic Congressmen and cabinet secretaries who had retired to the law-and-lobbying firms.

Comes now Mr. Clinton, who may actually be a new Democrat if he has the grit to follow the map he sketched on Wednesday night.

Like most Clinton speeches, it was long-winded and lanky. But the core was clear enough. Republicans say no new taxes are needed. Mr. Clinton said he wanted more revenues and that he was willing to risk his political health by saying exactly which taxes would go up and who would pay them. He went on to say that not all the spending of the Reagan-Bush era could continue, and that as President he was willing to start choosing.

He advocated stopgap savings in Federal wages and Medicare-Medicaid. Then there were 150 piecemeal cuts touching some sacred Democratic porkpies like rural electrification. Mr. Clinton's trickiest wrinkle was to declare as "investments" a variety of social programs such as Head Start and the Job Corps. Even so, he managed to slam-dunk the Republicans when they snickered at his figures by reminding them that both Mr. Reagan and President Bush favored fictional budget numbers.

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But the real hook was his invitation to his hosts. If Congress had a better idea, he was eager to see it step up and make its choices in public. You had to wonder why the Democrats kept jumping up and applauding this approach. The House leadership, in particular, is larded with plump fellows who never saw a tough choice they could not dodge.

At least the Republicans seemed to know what was going on. Never in recent memory have they been so thoroughly wrong-footed. It was no accident that cagey old Bob Dole let his House counterpart, Bob Michel, grin and grind through a threadbare opposition speech.

Presidents must seem to grow larger in office. By that standard Wednesday evening was a plus for Mr. Clinton and for the nation. But it is too early to rejoice. The man's record in Arkansas shows that his vision is sometimes greater than his guts, and the obstacles of entrenched interests and parochial greed that sometimes stalled him in Little Rock are nothing compared with what lurks in the heart and habits of this Congress.

Mr. Clinton urged its members to "have no sacred cows except the fundamental interest of the American people." The instant polling showed that 79 percent of the American people endorsed this view and the harsh prescriptions dashed off by Mr. Clinton. Now let the Congress earn its keep by either enacting this program speedily or coming up with something more honest.

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A version of this editorial appears in print on February 19, 1993, on Page A00026 of the National edition with the headline: The Vision Beyond the Plan. Today's Paper|Subscribe